Yexin Jessica Li

Economic Decision Biases and Fundamental Motivations: How Mating and Self-Protection Alter Loss Aversion

Much research shows that people are loss averse, meaning that they weigh losses more heavily than gains. Drawing on an evolutionary perspective, we propose that although loss aversion might have been adaptive for solving challenges in the domain of self-protection, this may not be true for men in the domain of mating. Three experiments examine how loss aversion is influenced by mating and self-protection motives. Findings reveal that mating motives selectively erased loss aversion in men. In contrast, self-protective motives led both men and women to become more loss averse. Overall, loss aversion appears to be sensitive to evolutionarily important motives, suggesting that it may be a domain-specific bias operating according to an adaptive logic of recurring threats and opportunities in different evolutionary domains.

Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket Life-History Strategies, Bet Hedging, and Diversification

Diversification of resources is a strategy found everywhere from the level of microorganisms to that of giant Wall Street investment firms. We examine the functional nature of diversification using life-history theory—a framework for understanding how organisms navigate resource-allocation trade-offs. This framework suggests that diversification may be adaptive or maladaptive depending on one’s life-history strategy and that these differences should be observed under conditions of threat. In three studies, we found that cues of mortality threat interact with one index of life-history strategy, childhood socioeconomic status (SES), to affect diversification. Among those from low-SES backgrounds, mortality threat increased preferences for diversification. However, among those from high-SES backgrounds, mortality threat had the opposite effect, inclining people to put all their eggs in one basket. The same interaction pattern emerged with a potential biomarker of life-history strategy, oxidative stress. These findings highlight when, and for whom, different diversification strategies can be advantageous.

Doing Good in Another Neighborhood: Attributions of CSR Motives Depend on Corporate Nationality and Cultural Orientation

In the past few decades, consumers around the world have placed increasing value on corporate social responsibility (CSR). As a response, companies entering new markets have boosted spending in areas like cause-related marketing to improve their reputation and create goodwill among consumers in the host country. However, these efforts may not be effective for all consumers or in all countries. Drawing upon research on intergroup bias and attribution theory, the present work explores how consumers from individualistic (the United States and Canada) and collectivistic (South Korea and India) cultures form attributions and attitudes about the CSR activities of foreign and domestic firms. Across three studies, we find that collectivistic (but not individualistic) consumers make more altruistic (but not egoistic) attributions about the CSR motives of domestic (vs. foreign) companies, and that altruistic attribution leads to more positive attitudes toward the firm. We also showed that collectivists’ bias against foreign firms is attenuated when level of commitment to the cause (as conveyed by CSR duration) is high.

Fundamental social motives and the varieties of religious experience

Evolutionary theorists have explained universals in religion, but no integrative theory exists to explain why multiple aspects of religion vary within and between individuals and groups. We propose how four dimensions of religions – beliefs about nonhuman agents, religious rituals, community structures, and moral concerns and values – may change in response to the fundamental social goals of self-protection, disease avoidance, coalition formation, status seeking, mating and mate retention, and kin care. We review empirical research and provide testable hypotheses, and finally discuss implications of this theoretical framework for the study of evolution and religion.

Evolutionary Social Psychology

Evolutionary social psychology is the study of how people think about, feel about, and behave toward others, as viewed through the lens of evolutionary biology. This approach to social psychology synthesizes developments in several fields, including zoology, ecology, cognitive neuroscience, and anthropology. The beginning premise is that all recurrent human social behaviors reflect the influence of physical and psychological predispositions that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. The evolutionary approach is a perspective that can be utilized to generate hypotheses about a wide range of human thoughts and behaviors. Here, we provide a brief synopsis of the theory and research generated by this perspective.

Ecological variability and religious beliefs

Religious beliefs, including those about an afterlife and omniscient spiritual beings, vary across cultures. We theorize that such variations may be predictably linked to ecological variations, just as differences in mating strategies covary with resource distribution. Perhaps beliefs in a soul or afterlife are more common when resources are unpredictable, and life is brutal and short.

Economic subselves: Fundamental motives and deep rationality

It was not long ago that questions of social justice were at the forefront of theoretical and empirical inquiry in social psychology. The father of modern social psychology, Kurt Lewin, promoted the discipline as, among other things, a scientific means of fostering democratic, egalitarian norms and preventing tyranny and oppression from gaining the upper hand in society. Although he seldom (if ever) couched these goals in the explicit language of social justice, it is clear that his “applied” research programs on overcoming certain forms of prejudice, outgroup hostility, and self-hatred among Jews—to mention some of the most salient examples—reflected a commitment to social justice as well as a scathing critique of authoritarianism and the fascist ideology that had seized the hearts and minds of so many of his fellow citizens in 1930s Germany. Lewin self-consciously strove to integrate theoretical and applied goals, which he believed could be “accomplished in psychology, as it has been accomplished in physics, if the theorist does not look toward applied problems with highbrow aversion or with a fear of social problems” (Lewin, 1944/1951, p. 169). It is not surprising that one of Lewin’s doctoral students, Morton Deutsch, went on to become one of the field’s most illustrious contributors to the field of social justice research (see Deutsch, 1973, 1985, 1999). Another prominent social psychologist of the postwar era, Gordon Allport, observed that, “Practical and humanitarian motives have always played an important part in the development of social psychology” (1954/1962, p. 4). Specifically, he wrote that: Social psychology began to flourish soon after the First World War. This event,J.P. Forgas, K. Fiedler, C. Sedikides, Social Thinking and Interpersonal Behaviour: Classical Theories and Contemporary Approaches. Part 1. Evolutionary Influences on Social Cognition and Behavior. D.T. Kenrick, Y.J. Li, A. E. White, S.L.Neuberg, Economic Subselves: Fundamental Motives and Deep Rationality. A. Galperin, M.G. Haselton, Error Management and the Evolution of Cognitive Bias. W. von Hippel, R. Trivers, Self-deception to Deceive Others. G.R. Semin, G.V. Garrido, A Systemic Approach to Impression Formation: From Verbal to Multi-modal Processes. Part 2. Automatic Mechanisms Linking Social Cognition and Behavior. A. Dijksterhuis, Exploring the Relation between Motivation and Intuition. C.N. Macrae, L.K. Miles, S.B. Best, Moving through Time: Mental Time Travel and Social Behavior. P. Winkielman, L. Kavanagh, How Do Emotions Move Us? Embodied and Disembodied Influences of Emotions on Social Thinking and Interpersonal Behavior. M. Waenke, J. Samochowiecz, J. Landwehr, Facial Politics: Political Judgment Based on Looks. Part 3. Cognitive and Affective Mechanisms. E. Eich, T.C. Handy, E.A. Holmes, J. Lerner, H.K. McIsaac, Field and Observer Perspectives in Autobiographical Memory. K. Fiedler, The Formation of Attitudes and Judgments in a Virtual Class Environment. K.L. Johnson, C.M. Carpinella, Social Categorization at the Crossroads: Mechanisms by Which Intersecting Social Categories Bias Social Perception. J.P. Forgas, The Upside of Feeling Down: The Benefits of Negative Mood for Social Cognition and Social Behavior. C. Sedikides, J.J. Skowronski, Construct Accessibility and Interpretation of Self-Behaviors: Tracing and Reducing the Signatures of Self-Protection and Self-Enhancement. Part 4. Social and Cultural Factors in Social Thinking and Interpersonal Behavior. Y. Kashima, Culture as Interpersonal Process. J.T. Jost, A.C. Kay, System Justification as an Obstacle to the Attainment of Social Justice. J. Cooper, Thinking as a Social Group or Thinking as a Social Group Member: Different Implications for Attitude Change. B.F. Malle, S. Guglielmo, A.E. Monroe, Moral, Cognitive and Social: The Nature of Blame.

Fundamental Motives and Business Decisions

You walk into a crowded negotiation room. Who do you notice? Who do you later remember? Do you try to fit in, or attempt to stand out from others? Do you accept the first reasonable offer, or do you balk at that offer? The answers likely depend critically on your current motivational state. Emerging evidence shows that a person’s behavior differs—sometimes dramatically—depending on whether that person is concerned with personal safety, romance, status-seeking, affiliation, or is motivated to attain some other evolutionary important goal. A growing body of research suggests that certain motivational states are considered “fundamental” in a biological sense because of their implications for evolutionary fitness. In this chapter, we overview the fundamental motives framework, highlighting its applications for business decision-making in marketing, management, entrepreneurship, and finance. We then review recent research that has used this approach to study specific business-relevant topics such as risky financial decision-making, negotiation, advertising, and innovation. Bridging evolutionary biology and business, the fundamental motives framework not only provides novel insights into workplace decisions, but also holds promise as a powerful approach for understanding how behavior in business contexts connects to other aspects of human and animal behavior.

Religion, sexuality, and family

In broad terms, James’s postulations set the agenda for this chapter. That is, we will fi rst examine the evidence suggestive of a “sick-souled” neural profi le typifi ed by a predominance of negative emotionality that might predispose some individuals to seek out religion as a means of coping with such tendencies. More specifi cally, we will review neurophysiological research linking the same pattern of hemispheric functional dominance and neurotransmitter activity to both a predisposition towards spirituality/religiosity and a tendency to experience negative mood states and more global diffi culties in cognitive-affective regulation. With this as a backdrop, we will suggest that some individuals who possess such a “sick-souled” neural profi le may be inclined therefore to turn to religion as a means of coping with their negative affective states.Psychological interest in religion, in terms of both theory and empirical research, has been constant since the beginning of psychology. However, since the beginning of the 21st Century, partially due to important social and political events and developments, interest in religion within personality and social psychology has increased. This volume reviews the accumulated research and theory on the major aspects of personality and social psychology as applied to religion. It provides a high quality integrative, systematic, and rigorous review of that work, with a focus on topics that are both central in personality and social psychology and have allowed for the accumulation of solid and replicated and not impressionist knowledge on religion. The contributors are renowned researchers in the field who offer an international perspective that is both illuminating, yet neutral, with respect to religion. The volume’s primary audience are academics, researchers, and advanced students in social psychology, it but will also interest those in sociology, political sciences, and anthropology.